My Accustomed Freakout
Some years ago, I worked up a little spoken word routine about tripping, which began like this:
I have developed a secret method for taking psychedelic drugs and getting a HUUUGE experience out of a relatively small dose of mushrooms or acid or whatever. Um, anybody interested in hearing my method? … Okay … so my secret is that I start to freak out before I even take anything.”
And it’s true actually. I’ve tripped well over a hundred times, and each and every time, the soul-shaking existential terror starts to come on well before the medicine.
(Okay, to be absolutely transparent, maybe not each and every time, only because there were seasons of my life when I tripped too frequently for my deep-set complexes of fear to fully reconstitute between trips.)
And that’s why, usually, I do psychedelics by myself, so other people won’t see me in that state.
A dear friend who is knowledgeable about the relatively new psychological theory called Internal Family Systems suggested that the “part of me” which emerges at the beginning of a trip is an “exiled” part, a terrified inner child who holds the impact of adverse childhood experiences that have been never been integrated with the rest of my psyche.
“Maybe,” I mused. “Or maybe it’s epigenetics – ancestral trauma I carry in my cells. Or maybe fear of an unkind God.”
A Dubious Date
I took a walk with a new friend a few years ago. Maybe it was a date. Hard to tell sometimes, but I think it was a date. We were feeling each other out in that date-ish kind of way.
It wasn’t going well. We were not communicating smoothly. I felt we were bypassing one another, not “speaking each other’s language.” At one point she dropped a casual remark and I don’t even remember what prompted it, or what the context was.
She blithely stated, with an ironic chuckle, “God is psychotic.”
I looked at her then, probably in a strange way.
I suppose I could have asked her to clarify or elaborate, but I felt like I “got it.” It felt to me like she was, in an odd indirect way, bragging. As in: “The universe is powered by insane forces, but that’s okay because I have my shit together. It sucks that God is psychotic but I’m a bold, self-aware, empowered modern woman, so who the fuck needs God? I’m fine.”
That was the vibe I caught, I thought.
Then again, maybe she was simply tuned into the staggering quantity and multiplicity of all the forms of suffering in our midst, of which the totality of human violence, soul-crushingly awful as it is, is barely the tip of the tip of the iceberg compared to all the agony built into Nature herself, via horrific diseases, and the way animals savage each other, and how life feeds pitilessly on life from the microbial realm on up, and probably on other planets too, in ways we cannot and would likely never want to imagine.
Torture. Child sexual abuse. The mere existence of these phenomena alone rebuff any conception I might have of a beneficent deity.
Anyway, this friend wrote to me a few days later, via Facebook, and she mentioned the “God is psychotic” comment and referred to it as having been a little joke. This made me realize that she had taken note of the look I’d given her at the time, but had likely misinterpreted it, possibly imagining she’d offended some religious belief I held, or even caused me to fear that God might get vindictive in response to such casual disrespect.
The Judeo-Christian God does, after all, have a conspicuously prickly ego. His first commandment is “Thou shalt have no other Gods before me.” And He’s awfully unforgiving if you don’t bend your knee to Him – a lot. For example, he killed thousands of Israelites in the desert (via a gruesome plague) for the “sin” of worshipping a golden calf rather than Himself.
In fact, I sometimes wonder if that’s why evangelicals adore Trump. Emotionally, Trump is very much like their God. He demands utter unequivocal loyalty and worship, or else he casts people out and destroys them. But I digress …
Existential Optimism as Privilege
It’s easy to imagine that the universe is working as it should, in some divinely coordinated fashion, when your health is okay and you’re not suffering too much.
But here’s another quick story of something a friend once said. This particular friend has a rare congenital skin condition that has caused her physical pain throughout her life. She constantly struggles with it, has good days, flare-up days, etc.
Once we were sharing a restaurant meal and I remarked carelessly, about some situation unrelated to her affliction, “Well, like they say, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” (I was not thinking about her skin in that moment.)
Not missing a beat, she replied flatly, “I put that in the same basket of bullshit as ‘everything happens for a reason.’”
My First Good Trip
In 1975, I was 17 years old. I’d done acid exactly twice, and both times were so terrifying I felt I’d barely escaped with my sanity. Nonetheless I was convinced that I needed to “face” whatever it was, and so I was constantly on the hunt for more acid. Most of my high school friends knew better than to help me find it.
But through a series of unlikely events I wound up with a huge jar of “mushroom juice.” The person who had gifted me with it told me it was “four-way,” meaning it should be split among four people, divided into four roughly equal portions.
I took it with me to a chess tournament. Or actually, I took it with me to the North Miami Beach hotel room where my two chess buddies and I were staying prior to the tournament. One friend had no interest in “drugs” of any kind; the other had never tried psychedelics before but was eager to.
I placed the jar of juice on a table between us, and I explained carefully to this friend that we should both only drink about a quarter of its contents, which we proceeded to do.
Then my friend asked, “Well, what about the rest of it?”
“That’s for another time,” I pronounced authoritatively.
“If you don’t want it now, can I drink it please?” He was very, very eager.
I hesitated. “Okay, let’s split it then,” I said, not to be outdone by his adventuresome spirit.
A short time later, my two friends declared that they needed to go out and find some dinner.
“Go ahead. Go without me,” I said.
They looked at me quizzically. “You sure?”
“Yeah yeah,” I said. “Just go. Go.”
The room was starting to waver. The now-familiar stirrings of profound unease, initial rumblings of subterranean panic from my first two trips, had already started to creep over me.
When my friends returned some 20 or 30 minutes later, I was curled in a fetal position on one of the beds, groaning softly.
“Marc!” cried my co-tripping friend, ebullient as ever. “What are you doing??”
“Just leave me alone,” I muttered piteously.
“What?! Hey, we brought you some food! Here!” He wedged a hot dog between two of my toes.
“STOP it! Just leave me alone.”
“Leave you alone?!” My friend was incredulous. “Well … okay.”
And both my friends exited the room in high spirits, mystified.
About three minutes later my high-as-a-kite buddy came charging back in. “Marc! I have to show you something! COME ON! I’ll leave you alone, I promise! Just let me show you one thing, ONE THING!! Come on!” And he grabbed my arm and spun me off of the bed.
He led me briskly out the room, down the hall, into the hotel lobby, out the back door of the hotel, and onto the pool deck outside. (I noticed, as we were walking, that I was feeling less and less afraid, which surprised me.) He led me across the length of the pool to the back of the deck where some stairs led down to the beach, and then down the stairs, across the sand, to the foot of the ocean, where the waves lapped our bare feet.
I took a deep breath. I stared out at the ocean as my friend watched me.
“Oh my god,” I said.
My friend laughed.
I laughed too, hysterically, and I cried tears of joy. My friend and I jumped up and down and danced around and hugged each other.
The ocean! The ocean could hold everything. The ocean was soooo vast, with its infinite variety of life forms, stretching from continent to continent, across inconceivable distances … it could hold me too! It did hold me! I was in relationship with this unfathomable life-giving force.
“Look!” I cried. “I can use the ocean to rinse the sand off of my hands!”
This struck me as at once so ludicrous and so precious – tiny little me could partake of the ocean’s immensity, could touch it in this little way, have easeful commerce with it, in seamless harmony with its awesome power.
It was a warm humid South Florida night. My heart was bursting with gratitude and astonishment. I actually thought I might never be unhappy again. I had never felt so safe, so utterly suffused with the warmth of pure love, so sure that I was altogether okay, and that everything was okay.
So, In a Nutshell …
And that’s why I still use psychedelics, nearly 50 years later. I’ve turned to acid and mushrooms (and a few other magic medicinal substances) throughout my life, especially during times of great stress, despite the initial terror I experience with nearly every trip.
Though every trip (and every substance) is a little different, they’ve all basically been variations on the same theme for me since that long-ago night on North Miami Beach. Overpowering fear, followed by hours of extraordinary well-being and bliss, together with a pervading sense of certainty, defying all logic and language, that all things are essentially okay, despite appearances.
No Guarantees
There are no guarantees that I’ll “get through” the fear to the bliss, and I especially know this when I’m in the throes of the scary parts of my trip, and the only prayer I have is a desperate “help me help me help me …” to some indistinct higher power that I’m not even sure exists. I’m not sure my pleas for help are heard by Anyone or anything … and yet help always arrives. That ineffable, inexpressible peace arises within me and I feel like a beloved baby, swaddled, protected, forgiven.
Renowned song circle leader Lawrence Cole wrote a song that goes, “You want to get up to the joy you got to go down deep. So go down go down go down.” I understand. When I use psychedelics, I go down quickly. And that’s all I get to choose to do. The rest is pure grace, which I don’t comprehend at all.
A Cure for Fear?
My friend who is knowledgeable about Internal Family Systems and the “exiled frightened child” that lives within many people (like me) is of the opinion that with some intensive work, I can “integrate” my terrified inner child and then I won’t have to experience spasms of debilitating fear anymore every time I trip. I believe him, I think.
But a part of me is reluctant. I’m not going to kid you (or myself). I also have a very arrogant side. I secretly think I’m special. So given that, maybe it’s good for me to be reminded now and again in a strong way of how puny and insignificant “Marc” is in the scheme of things, how little I really control, including my own sanity. There’s nothing much more humbling than being shaken to your core by existential dysphoria and a shapeless massive fear.
Over the years, I’ve come to accept that fear is simply part of the whole experience. (Many other people too report that they feel unsettled and fearful as psychedelics are “coming on,” though I’ve not heard anyone else describe that phase of a trip in quite the extreme way that I experience it.) Psychedelics also reveal to me the ways I stoke fear in my system when I’m not tripping, like indulging in hateful, resentful thoughts, or getting wrapped up in news reports about Donald Trump.
In fact, I doubt that psychedelic substances are what cause me to fear; I think fear is something that accumulates in me like sludge, and substances just reveal it, and then flush it away, like a psychic enema. (And I usually do drink multiple quarts of water when I trip.)
All the same, I think I’m ready. That is, I’m game to lose the terror if possible. I don’t think I’d miss it. Maybe I’ve been humbled enough times by now. I’ll see.
Gods that Don’t Work for Me
Sometimes, when I’ve been high, I have experienced vivid colorful psychedelic visions of deity-like figures that resemble characters from the Hindu pantheon, but I don’t relate to them in a personal way. I just assume they represent archetypal material from the collective unconscious, coming visible to me temporarily in the mishmash of the big experience.
And though well-meaning persons have occasionally advised me to do so, it’s never felt natural to me to simply “choose” an appealing form from some tradition or another to establish a devotional relationship with, be it Avalokiteshvara (cool name though! I like pronouncing it), the goddess of compassion; or Kuan Yin, who has come highly recommended and is also the goddess of compassion (though different in some aspects, I gather, from Avalokiteshvara, her sister or alter-ego or something); or the Buddha; or Shiva; or Jesus; or any of them really. They’re all just exotic, almost lurid, meme-ish constructs to me.
There’s this old joke that Unitarian Universalists pray “To Whom It May Concern.” Ha ha. But actually, I resonate with that. When my staccato “help me help me” prayer comes whispering forth in an abjectly compulsive stream from my lips, I certainly haven’t the vaguest idea Who might be listening.
I don’t think it’s any of those colorful Hindu or Buddhist gods with the wild robes and the extra limbs and stuff. I mean, I don’t know, but they just look so weird. And nope, not Jesus, definitely not Him either. I appreciate his long hair but it’s not enough. And as for the God of the Jews … at least my tribe has the sense and decorum not to ascribe a form to Him, but His personality and behavior are so atrocious, I can’t go there with Him either.
So who the hell do I pray to, when I pray? I don’t know.
What Feels to Me like God
One of my godsons is a practicing Buddhist. We were sitting outside together recently and he informed me that there was a mosquito on my forehead. I reflexively lifted my hand to swat it.
“Don’t kill it!” he exclaimed.
So I brushed it away, somewhat fiercely. “There. Did I kill it or just injure it?” I inquired.
“I think it got away alive,” he reported.
“Thank God,” I said. “Because the bad karma would be magnified ten times if I killed it while I was speaking with you.”
He grinned and told me cheerfully to shut up.
I don’t really get it about compassion for all beings. I kill mosquitos often, and I kill noisy flies if they have the misfortune of unwittingly tormenting me in the sanctity of my home. Also, microbial wars rage on my skin and in my gut and I scarcely notice.
But hey – and go ahead and laugh at this if you want – but I have felt compassion for little insects, while I’m “under the influence.” When I’m super high and I see some bug wandering aimlessly, without companions, somewhere in my house, I feel a rush of sympathy. Sometimes I try to field the little guy (I don’t know why I always think of the bug as a guy) onto a piece of paper and take it outside, but usually I just let it go its way across the floor or table, silently wishing it luck on its little journey, hoping it finds its way home somehow.
On a really good trip, I feel enormous tenderness for bugs.
And that feeling of tenderness – so, so soft, so infinite, so complete, extended inward as well as outward – feels to me like what I would call God.
It’s beyond rationality, deeper than thought, yet so wondrously strong, like the ocean. A tenderness that flows beneath and within everything. I have felt it, so I believe in it.
And that – against all the horror of human and nonhuman suffering – is my only evidence of a kind God.
I’m not suggesting it’s conclusive, but I am grateful for that evidence. I lean on it. It’s the only religion I have.
And Finally … My Tentative (Loose) Theory of the Case
Perhaps, by now, I should be able to articulate some coherent theory about “God,” but I can’t. I’m no mystic or visionary; just a curious and arguably somewhat brainy modern American old Jewish boy who’s been blessed with tremendous freedoms and luxuries denied his ancestors, and who has imbibed lots of interesting substances (like millions of his peers). And like so very many Jews, I’m an incorrigible agnostic.
But I can at least offer a tentative theory of the case where God is concerned.
Esteemed mystical sources over the millennia have attested that all of us are a part of God. If that’s true, then maybe we all create the universe all the time. So if I want to create a universe of all-encompassing compassion, even for mosquitos, I can start doing that. (In my case, it would not stop me from killing mosquitos, but I might still feel compassion and tenderness for them even as I do so. We all die, after all, and I’m sending them on quickly; it’s not as if I’m torturing them first or anything. I can, without hatred, crush a mosquito who’s dining on my blood. It’s just this little life-and-death dance we do. Sooner or later, someone or something will smush me too. And if I’m super lucky, like the mosquitos, I’ll never know what hit me.)
This is all to say, if I’m a part of God, I needn’t look outside myself for an answer as to what kind of universe God “administers” (or whether God is “psychotic” or not).
I can, if I choose, at any moment I choose, dedicate my life to the Great Tenderness, which is my best approximation of God. I can amplify God as best I understand Her. Participate with Her. Invite and allow Her to create through me.
Maybe God, like you and like me, is a work in progress (and perhaps forever will be, God help us).
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